#14 The Human Footprint
How many is too many?
In 1975, recently out of college and ready to join the homesteader migration to The Woods, one of our reasons was what we considered the terrible overcrowding in the metropolitan Boston area where Jean & I grew up. Dirty cities, traffic jams, too many people, terrible air and water pollution. The press was filled with articles about the impending population explosion, endemic famine, overflowing landfills, depleted resources.
Since then, the world population has doubled (from about 4 to 8 billion) but we seem to have faired remarkably well! The Clean Air & Water Acts have done an astonishing job at reducing the most visible pollution, new agricultural technologies have kept us fed, fracking has kept our homes warm and cars running. We throw away more than ever and recycle less. What’s not to like?
Still, everyone must agree that there has to be some limit to what Mother Earth can support. Given the recent pandemic and baffling political turmoil, perhaps it’s worth considering whether we are approaching that limit. Or maybe we have already surpassed it! If everyone one on earth did everything they could to reduce their “footprint”, could the earth recover?
Back in the Day, it was fashionable to blame the Pope for the steep slope of the population graph. If he would just give The Pill a thumbs up, our troubles would be over. He replied that if reducing the birth rate was the goal, we should increase the standard of living of the world’s poorest peoples. If there is one lesson we should take from the new globalized economy, it’s that he was right!
While globalization was busy knocking the stuffing out of the American middle class, it has had an amazing effect on fertility rates wherever it has taken root in the developing world. China has already dropped below the replacement rate and India is not far behind. While economists worry about what happens with declining populations, it certainly seems like the rest of the biosphere would heave a sigh of relief.
We don’t need to worry about a declining world population any time soon. The UN predicts that the number of people on the planet will not level off until about 2100 — at nearly 11 billion souls. Given the way things are going, perhaps we should hedge our bets and work at slowing population growth more quickly.
It turns out that there is an even more powerful tool for reducing runaway birthrates — providing education and economic opportunities to women. The areas in the world where population growth is still rampant tend to be those that restrict those possibilities. The correlation between very high fertility rates and internal conflict is unavoidable: Somalia, Yemen, Afganistan, DR Congo, and Nigeria all display a “youth bulge”. As population migration driven by climate change increases, this becomes even more worrisome.
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Thanks for reading,
Doug Hylan, Brooklin, Maine
“Climate change is not only an environmental issue – it is a humanitarian, economic, health, and justice issue as well.” – Frances Beinecke
Great take on this Doug, appreciate the well-researched approach.